No Pokeballs Allowed
by Multikirby
Summary: An original story in a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon-like setting. An eevee's help-for-hire business is on its last legs, and when the land itself is beginning to fray at the seams, help comes from the most unlikely (or likely) of places. Reboot of an old story, lots of differences this time around. Give it a try even if you read the old one! Cover by @eevyerndracaneon.
1. Chapter 1

_**Chapter 1**_

Forgetting something is a curious part of living life. It is necessary. Media has explored the idea of permanent memory time and time again. There is a common thread as well in many - if not all - interpretations of this idea. That thread is the idea that a permanent memory is terrifying, immense, and on a general level rather unpleasant for the human mind to handle.

The fact is that if you were able to remember everything that you had ever experienced in your life in staggering, vivid, impeccable detail, your poor brain would be so overwhelmed with information that it would melt into a substance resembling tapioca that has been frozen and thawed a total of four times. You keep bringing the tapioca out of the freezer with the intent to eat it, but by the time it warms up your mind has moved on, and you are no longer in the mood for tapioca since a story you had been reading compared it to a melted brain.

Your mind does not have the time or resources to entertain itself with the memories of when you were five years old and had your first dessert. It always picks what to think about and what to leave behind. The less something is retrieved, the less likely it ever will be and is left behind in the impenetrable fog that obscures that strange grey area between existence and non-existence. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody can remember such a thing happening, the tree never toppled in the first place. There might have never been a tree. Perhaps even the forest itself has vanished from your subconsciousness. And as you sit there, happily eating your tapioca and reading an excellent book, memories and facts and ideas are continually slipping from your mind in a silent avalanche to the abyss.

This forgetfulness is, of course, better than the alternative. When thinking about a brain that holds onto everything it learns, another angle to approach this situation is one of confusion. Imagine a library, stretching as far as the eye can see. This library contains every bit of information that you have ever learned, from the answers to your fourth-grade spelling tests to the phone number of that bubble tea place near your first house to every single page of text you saw flipping through a dessert cookbook in a bookstore. As you can imagine this library is immense, and you can access all of it. But, of course, you won't. Even as you stare at this library, your mind adds more books, books about you staring at the very library you currently see. The bookcases grow exponentially before you, stretching further and further out of sight as even these words you read now are forever etched into the pages of your mind's library. How can you read all these books? Indeed, how can you find what you need when there is simply so much to look through?

It is better to forget than to remember. But it's also better to remember than to forget. Tapioca doesn't keep its taste well the fifth time you freeze it, so it'd probably be best to eat it now.

* * *

The soft blades of grass bent beneath the weight of Squirtle the eevee's paws as she walked pensively through a silent breeze-laden field. She brought her head up and inhaled through her nose, squinting to shield her eyes from the sun's rays peeking through the mostly overcast sky. After taking in the scent of wet grass around her, she let out a slow breath and brought herself to a stop.

Squirtle the eevee had a problem. And she didn't have much of a solution. So she came out here to the empty, featureless, insignificant plains to the west of Nuzlocke to think her situation through. She wasn't going to solve any problems at the flick of an ear, after all. At least, not the kinds that she had to deal with. Perhaps if she was a simple merchant or a bum she could flick her ears and tell herself not to worry about it. But she wasn't a merchant or a bum. She was neither of those things, and as such, she had to take these issues she was dealing with head-on. And that meant she had to stop referring to them as 'problems' and 'issues' and begin acknowledging what they were.

Squirtle began to walk again, this time staring down at her paws with her brow furrowed in focus. Alright, she thought, let's break this thing down into its base components.

She began to speak aloud, hoping to break the monotonous silence of her environment. Plus she'd heard that hearing something was meant to help with comprehension, so if she listened to herself speak about it, it should help. Right?

"Base component one: I run a freelance help-me service." Squirtle winced at her own words. She could have probably put that better, but she already knew this, so she got the gist of what she was trying to say. She continued.

"Base component two: Most of the requests that have been coming in as of late require physical strength to complete." Squirtle found nothing wrong with this, either. She'd been sitting behind her desk for the past year or two, sometimes doing general errands, or every once in a while making an expedition to some forgotten corner of the continent to find some coveted object. Sure, her stamina was pretty good from those sorts of things, and she knew how to survive, but fighting? Not a known strong suit of an eevee with her kind of lifestyle.

"Problem: I am not strong enough to keep my business open." Because of the nature of so many of the requests coming in, Squirtle hadn't been able to complete pretty much any of them for the past two weeks. And the thing about requests is that the rewards were what kept her business afloat. She'd been trying to hire some other more capable coworkers, but these ventures had gone less than stellar so far.

So how did she go about solving this? The eevee had tried putting flyers up around Nuzlocke, but she swore that town got more and more apathetic with each passing day. It made her wonder where all of these requests to do violent physical things even came from, considering the generally lazy passive nature of everyone in that town. This laziness, of course, didn't include her. She seemed to be the only one who was willing to do what other people asked her to do; the problem came from the fact that she, as was the case with a few of her past applicants, weren't able to.

Squirtle took a deep breath and brought her head up to look at the sky. The sun was on its descent into the horizon, streaking the atmosphere with the slightest shades of natural pink. The day was running out, and she still was without a solution to her problem. No matter how much she racked her brain the only solution that made itself clear to her was 'get a better applicant'.'

I appli-can't do that, Squirtle thought snidely to herself, letting out a puff of a wry laugh as she turned tail to head back to Nuzlocke before night fell. She knew she wasn't strong. That was a fault she wasn't proud to have, but she knew that she had it. Training wasn't much of an option for her - it'd take too long, and by the time she was up to snuff she'd be so far in the red, she could catch fire. Another sardonic smile graced her face. It was immediately wiped away when she noticed something on the ground that wasn't there when she'd made her way out here.

If anyone asked Squirtle what being an explorer-for-hire was like, she'd tell them that it was hard but rewarding work. The hard part came from getting used to seeing bad things. What she wouldn't tell them was that she had never really gotten over seeing bad things. Not really. So when Squirtle saw someone unmoving, face down in the grass, she felt her heart drop into her stomach as her mind desperately tried to crawl its way back up from the worst possible conclusion. As she slowly inched closer to what she observed to be a riolu, she reached a paw out and poked it.

Still warm, Squirtle thought. That was a good sign. Whoever this was probably wasn't dead. No wounds or anything either. He was moving, too.

That last part was a little more shocking than comforting.

Squirtle jumped back with her hackles raised in fear as the riolu groaned, a hand sleepily stretching out to make contact with the ground, struggling to push its owner up into a sitting position. Squirtle took deep breaths to calm herself down at least a little. Whoever this was didn't look like they were in the best shape, and if it came down to it, she'd be able to outrun them. She hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Riolu's eyes blinked open, refreshing the expression of discomfort on their face as their mouth strained into a grimace from the light of the sun still in the sky. They opened their mouth to speak, but what came out was nothing but a dry, cracked voice. Squirtle's guard was lowered. This seemed more like a victim than a danger.

"Hey," she said softly, keeping her distance for now. "Are you alright?" It was a dumb question. There was no way they were alright. It just felt like something she had to say.

"..." He tried to speak again - at least, Squirtle guessed it was a he from the lower tone of what came out of his mouth. "...Not...really." It was as scratchy as if he had been gargling rocks.

"Here, come on," Squirtle offered, moving closer to him. He staggered backwards suddenly as his eyes flashed with fear for just a moment before transforming into pain from the strain he put on his arms. Squirtle paused her approach, deciding to move a little slower in response to it. "I have a place back in town. We can get you some water and stuff."

Riolu seemed to consider this as he shakily pushed himself to his feet. His legs trembled like leaves in the wind, and he was only able to walk a couple of steps before stumbling. He barely caught himself on his arm, the weight from the action causing him to cry out in pain. With a jerk, Squirtle surged forward and pushed herself up against his side to keep him from falling further. She felt his chest surge as he sucked in air to mitigate the pain, but he gave her a tired smile and a halfhearted 'thanks'.'

"Come on, it's this way," Squirtle said carefully, pushing herself against Riolu to support him and guide him in turning around, back towards Nuzlocke. The path was well-worn beneath her paws, and she knew the way there and back by heart, so she could support this guy when he stumbled pretty easily. Which was good, because he stumbled a lot.

He was trying to talk more now that Squirtle was helping him. The more speaking he attempted, the more his vocal cords warmed up. Soon he was able to get full sentences out. The first one he coherently said was "What are you?"

Squirtle didn't really know how to take this question. Sure, eevees weren't the most common thing in the world, but people generally knew what they were. Still, maybe this guy was from some desolate part of the Mist Continent or something. It couldn't hurt to answer his question.

"I'm an eevee," she said, silently thankful that she didn't have to explain her name quite yet. That was always a bit of a pain to clarify to people who met her for the first time.

Riolu nodded to himself, his mouth forming a frown as he chewed on that bit of information. His next question came five minutes later. "Where are we going?"

"My house," Squirtle replied. "I've got some food and a bed there."

This seemed to satisfy the stranger, as he remained silent for the rest of the walk to Nuzlocke. The town came into view as the sun set behind them, framed by the darkness of night creeping up over the horizon in the far east.

Squirtle didn't have too much to her name at the moment - that was a symptom of her failing help service. Her headquarters was a decently sized house built near the edge of town, unlabelled and pedestrian in appearance. The house was the newer kind of architecture, the one explicitly made with pokémon in mind rather than repurposing what humans had built years ago. That was something she was pretty proud of. She had, after all, commissioned this place herself.

Leaving Riolu's side for just a moment, she pushed the door open and held it for him, ushering him inside. As the door closed behind her, Squirtle took a deep breath and guided him to the small coffee table in the center of the main room. The wooden flooring was cold, which was to be expected. She hadn't put on the stove before she left, and Nuzlocke was hanging onto the cold season with as much fervour as it could muster. It didn't take long for her to juice some oran berries into a cup. It was pretty rudimentary considering she just used a fork, and all the skins of the fruit were still floating around in there. This was, she noted, nothing like the shakes she grew up with. But apparently the peel was the best part of the berry, and beggars couldn't be choosers anyway. She set down the juice in front of Riolu, apologized for the crudeness of it, and told him to drink.

He eyed the drink suspiciously but obliged, chewing on the peel itself before gulping the whole thing down. Colour returned to his face - at least a little. He quickly drained the rest of the drink, chugging it for a couple of seconds before slamming the cup back onto the table with an exasperated sigh.

"...That helped," he said finally.

With Riolu's voice restored, Squirtle couldn't help but be taken aback by how young he sounded. The scratchy gravel he was speaking earlier had made her think that he was at least fifty or something, but Riolu seemed like he was about her age. That wasn't what she should be focusing on, though, she noted.

Squirtle sat down across from Riolu, scrutinizing him as he looked about the room. She hadn't been able to really see him that well when they were walking back given the sun was behind them, silhouetting his face. But now that they were indoors with ample light from both the stove and the electrical lamps shining on him, she could see his state a lot better. This guy had seen better days. His entire front side looked more than a little bruised, and the left side of his face was scratched up badly. She was contemplating giving him a few more oran berries to help boost the healing process, but her mind went back to whether she could afford it or not. He wasn't wearing anything, so it wasn't clear whether he belonged to any sort of family or guild. She supposed she could always ask, though. As she stared, Riolu began shifting in his chair uncomfortably, and with a snap, Squirtle realized that he'd noticed her inspection.

"What happened to you?" Squirtle asked finally, trying to break the ice at least a little.

He was silent for a moment, staring down at the empty cup between his hands. "...My name is Coran," he said, not making eye contact with Squirtle.

This answer concerned her a little. Riolu was giving her his name already? Did he think they were on a first-name basis this quickly?

...He didn't like her, did he?

Squirtle quickly shook off this line of thought. There were plenty of reasons pokémon gave out their first names. Even to strangers! She just hadn't really expected it so quickly. She just hoped that he wouldn't consider it rude if she didn't give hers out yet. Besides that, though, this wasn't really an answer to what she'd asked. Should she restate her question?

"Nice to meet you," she said slowly, falling back into studying him. "Do you know what happened to you out there?"

This time Riolu looked somewhat off-put. His head jerked up to look at Squirtle with a mixture of surprise and confusion. It didn't take a genius to figure out that this wasn't the answer he had been expecting either. "What's your name?" he asked.

Shoot.

"Uh..." Squirtle winced. What was she supposed to say? "I don't...we don't really...you can call me Eevee." Riolu didn't seem satisfied with that answer, she noted. He kept staring at her. Now it was her turn to shift uncomfortably. She continued to explain, fumbling over her words. "Maybe, uh, maybe it works differently where you come from, but generally here we don't really, uh, give our names out to people we just met. It's considered," she paused, searching for the right word. "It's considered kind of forward."

Riolu took an agonizingly long time to digest this information but eventually sat back in his chair. "Huh. Okay."

This whole interaction had really put Squirtle off balance. She couldn't really ask her question a third time, could she? That seemed like pushing the issue a little. Then again, she had really ought to know what he was doing out in the field passed out and beat up if she was going to help him, right? That was only reasonable.

"Can you please tell me what you were doing out there now?" Squirtle pressed.

Riolu shrugged half-heartedly. "I don't know."

What? What kind of answer was that!? "You don't know?" she repeated flatly.

He nodded. "I don't remember going out there." Riolu paused, his nose scrunching up. "I don't remember a lot, actually."

Squirtle heard a small ringing sound in the back of her head. A signal, however faint, telling her that something was off about this whole situation. "What do you remember, then?" she asked, slowing down the pace of her words even more.

"My name." Riolu returned that answer near immediately. His gaze drifted up to the ceiling, the rhythmic drumming of his paws on the tabletop a quiet accompaniment to his inaudible thought process. "That's it."

The ringing was getting louder. "That's it?" She couldn't help but raise her tone in disbelief. This had an effect on Riolu, causing him to once again react in shock, moving to push himself away from the table. Squirtle winced. She wasn't going to get anything done if he was afraid of her. "You're sure you don't remember anything else?"

Riolu eased himself back into his seat, clearly agitated by the situation surrounding him. "I'm not too jazzed about it either, lady," he mumbled, his words slurring together from the lack of heart put behind them. After a brief moment, he scrunched up his face again and amended the sentence. "Eevee."

Squirtle frowned. The riolu said the word like he'd never heard it before. Was he mocking her? She bristled at the thought, trying to brush it off as culture shock or something. That had to be it. He didn't seem like he was mocking her in the way he was talking or anything. And she hadn't given him her name, so the 'lady' was probably just a vocabulary choice. Probably.

How was she supposed to proceed, though? He didn't know anything but his name. What was Squirtle supposed to do with that information?

Before she could continue, though, Riolu spoke up. "Sorry," he said, resting his head in his hands. "Look, I know how I sound. I know you're trying to help and I know how I sound." He brought his eyes up to connect with hers. "I'm not holding anything back. I even told you my name which apparently is a big deal or something. All I know is I fell, and I woke up, and you were there."

"You fell?" That was new information. "Is that how you got so scratched up?"

Riolu shrugged helplessly. "I'm pretty sure I know less than you do. You think it's that, that uh..." He tapped the table in thought. "Am...mass thing? Starts with an 'a'.'"

Ring ring ring ring.

"Amnesia?" Squirtle felt sick. She'd figured that this was what this guy had, but she had been hoping that it wasn't right. But now that the word was out there, it felt too right to be a coincidence.

"That," he said, pointing at her. "I hope it's not. That stuff is supposed to wear off though, innit?"

Squirtle nodded dully, Riolu's words muffled through her own thought process. He had amnesia. Of course, he had amnesia. And of course, she had to find him. She, the failing businesswoman on the brink of bankruptcy, had to find a helpless amnesiac. Absolutely wonderful.

"Right?"

There was a note of genuine concern in Riolu's tone that tore through Squirtle's thought process. She found herself nodding. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the case," she said. "I don't know how long it lasts for, but I don't think it's permanent."

Squirtle could see the battle on Riolu's face. He was thinking hard about something. "I'm going to ask you something," he said quietly, placing his chin on the table behind his arms, "and you can say no. I don't know what kind of crap you do, or what this place is or anything, but..."

He was going to say it.

"...can I stay here? Until I get enough memory back to function."

He said it. Everything clicked. This was another applicant. Riolu continued speaking, but Squirtle was barely listening anymore. Sure, he was weird, and couldn't remember anything. But odds were good that this guy was her last chance before she'd be forced to throw in the towel. He was a fighting-type, which meant that he was inherently physically strong. That was good, that was something that she was lacking. She'd have to assess him a little, but at this point, she didn't have much choice anymore.

"...Hello?"

Squirtle jerked with a start, realizing she hadn't said a single thing for a good two minutes. "You'd have to work," she said finally.

"I said that," Riolu droned, squinting curiously at her. "Were you even listening?"

Shoot.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Chapter 2_**

Time and effort are two valuable things in life that many of us have only a limited amount of. It can be difficult to grasp this principle when dealing with our lives on a micro level as each week and season and day and month seem to blend into a multicoloured purée resembling an alcoholic drink that is served only in a password-protected bar in the back alleys of a city three hours away by bus. The tastes meld together in confusing ways and last for a baffling ratio of moments. The days seem like forever while the months pass in an instant; weeks and years and quarters and minutes twirl with each other, their distinct flavours remaining separate and yet so inexplicably intertwined that the only thing you're left with at the end is a headache and a distinct lack of understanding as to why your wallet is currently on fire and tied to the ceiling fan by a loop of twine.

"How did I get here?" you might ask, going on to explain that you aren't entirely sure how the topic delved into strange cocktails in a back-alley bar when you had initially been reading about how time and effort are two commodities that can be hard to realize are indeed commodities. Time and effort, as stated earlier, are precious commodities that you only have so much of. And like all commodities, many people feel entitled to yours. Whether they are or are not is an entirely different debate, sensitive to issues and your personal taste as to what you serve each person clamouring for it, and what you believe they deserve. But the fact remains that everyone is dissatisfied with how much time and effort they have to do things and will, more often than not, try to save theirs by taking from the time and effort of others. The most insidious form that these endeavours take the form of is that of the obligation.

You see, with obligations, those who want your time and your effort need not even ask for it. It is expected to be delivered to them promptly and regularly, on schedule and of a particular quality. And sometimes these obligations are made mutually. Like going out with a friend every Wednesday, just as an excuse to get you out of the house. You never explicitly made a promise to them, but you've been going out for the past six Wednesdays, and if you stopped now it'd be awkward to explain why. So you keep going, doing different things around town. And as time goes by, you keep borrowing from each other's time and expect more effort to prevent things from feeling samey. Soon enough you're sitting on a bus for a three-hour ride to the west coast based on a hunch that your buddy felt. You've got a sick pit in your stomach because you have work the next day and, looking out the window, you're not exactly sure you're going to be getting back to your bed before four in the morning.

Your time is yours. Your effort is yours. But the funny thing about humans is that the less you spend these things on other people, the more depressed you become. The trick, like with everything in life, is finding a balance between devoting none of your commodities to others and devoting too much, lest you find yourself locked up in your room for the third week in a row, staring at the door from the foot of your bed, unblinking, and yet still seeing visions of a burning wallet slowly rotating, slowly spinning, slowly burning up the twine as it dangles from the ceiling fan of an unknown back-alley pub.

It's generally a good idea to carry fare for a cab in your back pocket in case something terrible happens to your wallet.

* * *

"You're going to be sleeping here tonight," Squirtle said as she led Riolu into the guest room at the back of the building. It wasn't anything fancy - she'd made it with the idea that if someone was unable to go home immediately after being helped due to the time of day, she could let them stay there for a small fee. She'd never used it once for that purpose.

"...Here?" Riolu slowed his pace once Squirtle pulled the curtain of beads away, revealing the room.

Squirtle gave him a subtle glare, though she wasn't sure he picked up on it. "Is something wrong?"

"Uh." Riolu took careful steps into the room, almost as if he were walking on hot coals. "No, it's okay, I'm just wondering..." He trailed off, looking down at the straw bed on the floor, then turned to Squirtle with a strained look. "I'm wondering what this is."

"That's a bed," Squirtle retorted flatly, her ears starting to sink against the back of her head. "You sleep on it."

"This is a -" He cut himself off with a grimace, and looked back at the bed in a public broadcast of discomfort.

Squirtle sighed irritably. "If you don't like it, you're welcome to find another place to sleep in town."

"Hey, I'm not insultin' it, I've just never seen a bed like this before." Riolu frowned. "Okay, I know I'm not exactly bein' polite here, but can you at least give me the benefit of the doubt about whether I'm rude or not? I don't know about your weird customs or whatever."

"This is a bed."

"Not where I come from."

"No, I'm telling you now, this is a bed."

"Oh." Riolu got down on his knees and patted it experimentally, looking deep in thought as he did. He hummed in a low tone, his brow furrowing.

Squirtle was just about done with this. Only just now realizing she had been grinding her front paw into the floor in vexation, she snapped, "What is it now?"

Riolu once again turned to face her with that same dumb look of surprise he had so often. "It's just, uh, softer than I thought it'd be."

That was a smack in the face. The toxic retort died in the eevee's mouth as Squirtle swallowed her words, fumbling to come up with some substitution. "Well," she said, raising her head primly. "I'm glad that it's not horrible. I'm going to bed now. Don't eat anything during the night."

"I won't," came the low reply as Squirtle let the curtain of beads drop in front of her. She was acutely aware of how hard she was driving her paws into the hardwood floor as she stormed off to her room. In god's name, why did her only hope have to be so insufferable?! Nobody she knew, not even Breloom, would be this blunt!

Riolu lost his memory, though.

The realization hit her like a truck. That was right. Riolu didn't remember a thing about where he was from. She noted in contempt that he seemed to know quite a lot about beds but quickly brushed those thoughts aside. She couldn't expect him to know anything about anything, really. That almost made her feel sick - she shouldn't be responsible for someone like that! But if she didn't do it, who would? Squirtle knew firsthand what people in Nuzlocke could be like. Pretty much everyone only looked out for themselves - that was why she made this whole help-desk thing in the first place! There's money in helping people who refuse to help themselves!

That wasn't why she made this whole help-desk thing in the first place. It was less selfish than that. She just wanted to help people.

Squirtle pushed open the door to her own room, continuing to pace after the door eased shut. She wanted to help people. She liked helping people. She always had. This had been a dream of hers since the very beginning, but with things going the way they were going she wouldn't be able to do it much longer. She needed Riolu, whether she liked it or not. And he needed Squirtle. What was his name again? Coran? She'd need to know it for the documents.

Squirtle brought her paw to her forehead and gritted her teeth, mentally swearing at herself. What was she doing?! She was falling into the exact same trap that she had seven times before! She had absolutely no obligation to help him out. He wasn't paying her, so he wasn't her problem. No matter how heartless that sounded, if she tried to care about every single hurting soul out there, she'd burn out faster than a firecracker. Her pacing began to increase in pace to match her quickened breathing and mental speed. She couldn't take him in just like that. She couldn't afford to. He'd need to be tested. A lot, Squirtle noted. If he failed, that was his problem. If he wasn't up to the job, that was his problem. This was his problem, not hers. Squirtle only found him! That didn't mean she had to help!

A sick feeling surfaced in her stomach as Squirtle slowed to a stop. She squinted her eyes shut so hard that she could see sparks. Listen to how you sound. Is that how you want to think? Could you say this to his face? The answer, Squirtle thought dejectedly, was no. She could never say any of this stuff to Riolu, especially not with his current situation. If he was just someone looking to make some quick coin things could be different, but just like how he was Squirtle's last stand, she was Riolu's last stand too. Squirtle was his de facto guardian - literally the only person he knew. And as much as she wanted to shirk that responsibility and give it to someone else, Squirtle knew that nobody around would be able to help him as much as she could.

"A week," she murmured to herself. "I'll give Riolu a week. Two weeks. If he can't prove himself by then, I'll find him another job in town for him."

And for the first time in weeks, Squirtle's room was completely silent. No maelstrom of thoughts dancing wildly in her head, no tick-tick-ticking of her claws pacing on the hardwood floor, no quiet harried mumbling under her breath. Everything was quiet.

_Breathe in. Breathe out. It's settled, then._

Slowly, methodically, as if partaking in a ritual, Squirtle moved behind her desk and hopped up onto her chair, organizing the necessary documents to get things started first thing tomorrow.

"Coran the riolu," she whispered to herself, fitting her pen into the strap on her paw while staring at the blank form in front of her. She fiddled mindlessly with the fabric to secure the pen against her wrist, too caught up in her own thoughts to be deliberate with it. "...Coran the riolu."

This was going to be a long night.

o o o

The morning came faster than Squirtle would have liked. She felt the familiar aching pressure on her forehead, telling her that she'd fallen asleep at the desk again. The wisps of sunlight sneaking through the window behind her stirred Squirtle from her slumber. Squirtle lifted her head wearily from the stack of papers, noting with dissatisfaction that she'd smudged some of the ink she'd set down with her face. That meant she had ink on her face. Wonderful.

Squirtle slipped off of her chair and trudged towards the water basin near her bed, dipping her paw in and splashing upwards to get the ink off. As she did, she looked back to the closed door to her room. Was Riolu up yet? She didn't hear anything from him. It'd probably be best for him to be asleep anyway, considering she wasn't finished with the forms yet. She'd have to get some shopping done today, too-

A dull pain jabbed into Squirtle's face as she rubbed it. She jerked her paw away and squinted at it scrutinizingly, realizing that she'd dunked her only good pen in the water basin, since she'd been wearing it when she went to sleep.

"Great," she grumbled. "New pen."

She'd have to go out and buy one before she could finish the forms and actually start testing Riolu, but she couldn't just leave him here alone, either. She'd have to wait until he woke up. At least that meant she could take this morning a little slower than expected, though.

Slipping the pen strap off of her wrist, Squirtle looked up at the mirror next to her bed, using her paw through her chest ruff, straightening out her necklace as she did. Her comb had broken a week ago, so this would have to do. Squirtle was not at all satisfied with how unprofessional she looked, even this early in the morning. Her chest fur stuck out in strands in a couple of places, and her Waterstone fragment necklace refused to sit right. It kept on tilting to the left, exposing the copper back the string was attached to. Even the cord itself looked like it was fraying - she would need to replace that, too. Her sleep schedule wasn't doing the bags under her eyes any favours, but those usually only lasted for the early morning anyhow.

She wasn't presentable by a long shot, but given the circumstances, it was a couple of steps above 'drowned dedenne,' and that was probably the best she was going to get. Maybe some tea would help her perk up a little.

Trying to inject a hop into her step so that she wasn't trudging like a zombie, she pushed open the door to the main foyer, giving a quick look to the left at the bead curtain. "Riolu?" she called. "Are you up?"

The only response she heard was a quiet snore. Still asleep, then. That's alright, Squirtle thought. She'd like to look less dead-eevee-walking by the time that he saw her in the morning.

Squirtle walked to the sink and pushed the kettle beneath it, turning the water on to fill it up. She gave another furtive look to the guest room, wondering if Riolu drank tea. If not, she'd just have more chesto tea for later, so that was fine by her. Squirtle hopped up onto the steps to let her reach the higher cupboards, nudging them open to look at what she had.

A half-empty box of chesto leaves greeted Squirtle as she eased the door open, along with two containers of leftover oats from a couple of nights ago. She was a little reluctant to share the oats given that she wasn't sure if Riolu would actually be working here or not yet but figured that it'd probably look pathetic if she didn't feed him at all. She couldn't show any sort of weakness or desperation to him - that's what happened with applicant number five, and she really regretted doing that.

Squirtle needed to wake up. She dragged the box of chesto leaves out of the cupboard, catching them on the counter as she took the kettle out from under the tap, setting it on the stove. She followed up with pouring the oats into a bowl, glancing at the bead curtain to see if the sprinkling noise woke her guest. No reaction.

The oats tasted stale and dull, and while they did their job of filling her up, there wasn't really much appeal to eating them on their own like this. Her mouth felt dry from the food. Squirtle stared down at the bowl in distaste as if giving it a heated enough glare would intimidate the oats into tasting better. Her breakfast scowl was interrupted by a quiet whistling behind her. The tea was ready. Squirtle quickly got up and put the bowl away, deciding to go and wake Riolu before she made the tea.

Squirtle brushed aside the bead curtain to see Riolu sprawled out over the straw bed, fast asleep. Seems the bed suited him well, at the very least.

"Hey, Riolu," Squirtle said quietly, shaking the beads a little to create some noise. "I'm making some tea. Would you like any?"

A disgruntled noise came from the riolu as he squinted his eyes shut. "Mmh...?" With a groan befitting that of a monumental task, Riolu sat up. His fur was matted and messed up in multiple places, and his expression resembled that of the living dead. Squirtle had to hold back a surprised yell from his appearance alone. He sleepily lifted a paw to his eyes, rubbing them. "...What'd you say?" he mumbled.

It took Squirtle a second to formulate a sentence. "Uh, I'm making tea. Do you want any?"

"...Got any coffee?" came the mumbled reply.

"Not right now, no." Squirtle leaned against the doorframe. "The tea I'm brewing wakes you up just the same, though."

"Better'n nuff'n," Riolu mumbled, flopping onto his back.

"You're going to have to come out here to get it though," Squirtle said pointedly, moving into the room to poke at his leg. "I'm not going to bring it to you."

Riolu just hummed in response. Taking that as good enough, Squirtle left the room and began brewing two cups of tea.

"Keep in mind that you're going to be tested before you're allowed to officially work here, Riolu," Squirtle called as she steeped the tea. "And your test started last night."

A loud groan came from the guest room, and Squirtle couldn't help but smirk at it. Even if she didn't have much choice here, that rush of holding power over someone's head never got old.

o o o

"So here's how this is going to work." Squirtle spread the papers she'd prepared last night out on the coffee table in front of Riolu. "You're not working here yet. You're going to be on strict probation over about a month. During that time you will be performing all of the duties an employee normally would. I'll be watching you. At the end of the month, I'll decide whether you're hired or not."

Riolu looked down at some of the papers, putting down one to pick up another. "I don't understand any of this legalese."

"You don't have to," Squirtle replied quickly. "I'm summarizing all of it for you now."

Riolu put down the last form. "Okay so, am I going to be living here while this probation stuff is happening?"

Squirtle nodded. "Yeah. It'll be easier to keep tabs on you that way. And considering you woke up in a field yesterday with no memory I'm willing to bet you don't have pockets right now."

"Uh." Riolu looked down at himself. "I'm not wearing any clothes. Is that another custom here?"

Right. Memory loss. "It's an expression," Squirtle said gently. "You don't have any money, do you?"

Riolu just shook his head.

"Then you can stay here free of charge for the month. If you want to keep living here after you get hired, I'll dock the price for room and board from your paycheck, but you'll probably get better rates than you would at Nuzlocke Inn."

"What about getting a house?"

"You'd have to build one."

"By myself?" Riolu looked aghast.

Squirtle simply shrugged. "I built this place."

Riolu's mouth drew into a hard line, and he looked back at the forms. Squirtle knew desperation when she saw it. He was reading that stuff over and over, hoping that one of the times he did they'd start making sense. It wasn't like she was trying to con him though, so she wasn't too worried if that sudden bolt of inspiration did come to him.

"If you're ready to go, just sign all the forms at the bottom," Squirtle instructed, pushing an inkwell towards him. "Your pawprint will do."

"Don't you have a pencil or something?" Riolu looked down at the inkwell with a furrowed brow.

"You don't sign legal documents with pencil, Riolu," Squirtle scoffed. "And, uh, the only pen I have right now is..." She paused. "It's in my room. It's my special pen. You can't use it."

Riolu gave Squirtle a hard look. "I feel like you aren't being super honest right now."

"People say that a lot when they're signing forms. Sign at the bottom, please? Just your paw."

"Hold on, hold on, wait." Riolu lifted his hands up. "I don't even know what you do, man. You're kinda shoving me into this without telling me anything about what I'm being shoved into."

Squirtle stopped short. She'd said something, hadn't she? There was no way she could have gone this long without saying it. Except there was, and that's precisely what she'd done. "We're hands for hire," she explained. "People post their requests on the bulletin board outside or deliver them to me personally. After deciding that they're worth completing, we complete the request and take the posted reward. We do anything from shopping for people to finding lost items. Though with the way current events are looking, a good chunk of the requests we've been getting involve combat."

"What kind of combat?" Riolu asked. "Are we talking brawls in the streets, or...?"

"Uh." Squirtle drew a quick breath. "You mean to say you don't know?"

Riolu didn't even respond to that, which was fair. He just gave her an unamused glare.

Squirtle flinched. "Alright, alright...but seriously, how much do you know about combat? That's kind of an integral part of our history, so I'm going to need to know exactly what you've forgotten, so you don't get confused."

He once again didn't respond, though this time it wasn't without pause for thought. "I mean, I know you guys battle. That's like, the main thing you do, right?"

"Um..." That's a bit of a weird way of putting it. Then again, he was a fighting-type, so maybe that was just the way he thought back where he came from. "Well, not really. I feel like you're talking more about the ferals? They're outside of towns like Nuzlocke, in the wild. They aren't much for conversation, and generally speaking, they aren't very bright. Usually, though, they just stay where they live and don't bother us."

"So you're not feral?"

Ouch. "No, Riolu, I'm not feral."

"Am I feral?"

"Probably not."

"Okay, well, if these guys stay out of town, why did you say 'in current events' or whatever? Why are we going to be fighting these things?"

"That I don't really know," Squirtle said, frowning. "I don't go into town that often, and I talk with people there even less, so I'm not too informed beyond what they post on the board. But I've been getting a lot of requests about going out into the wild recently. People are going out there more often, for one reason or another."

"So, to sum all this up," Riolu said, looking back down at the forms. "You want me to join your help thingy and fight people, even though you have no idea why we're fighting them?"

"Riolu, you're missing the point," Squirtle pressed. "We help people. That's the critical part. If helping them includes laying a beatdown on a couple of feral pokémon, who are we to judge as long as we get paid?"

Riolu was silent for a long time. He just stared at the forms blankly, his eyes unmoving. That was a thinking face. Finally, he spoke. "If I sign this paper are you going to stop calling me Riolu?"

Good god, this again? "What would you prefer?" Squirtle tried to keep the dread from creeping into her voice.

"Coran, my name," he retorted. "And I don't want to go callin' you 'Eevee' either. It's awkward."

"If you start calling me by my name out in public people are going to think we're a couple. Is that what you want?"

Riolu flashed a grin. "Maybe."

"It's not too late to fire you."

He responded by dipping his paw into the inkwell and messily slapping it onto the bottom of each of the forms. "Not like I had much choice anyway."

Squirtle put a paw to the side of her head as she watched him sign the documents. "Oh, Coran, you have no idea."


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry about how long this took to get up. I had finals in university, and then there were a whole slew of other complications in moving back home. By the time that was all sorted out I'd lost motivation to write again. Huge thanks to NaturallyDark for basically slapping some sense into me. Check out his story on this site while you wait for mine to finish up - I haven't read it yet since he isn't releasing it until after I've uploaded this chapter, but I'm sure it'll be good.**

**I'll also remove this note by the time the next chapter goes up, since if you're reading this four years in the future you won't know that, like, two months went past between Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. You don't need to know that.**

* * *

**_Chapter 3_**

One of the most annoying things about human history is learning other cultures. It's also one of the most fascinating things about our world, and many people all around the globe study the different ways humans interact with each other. Things as simple as putting your utensils at the top of your plate rather than on either side or greeting someone with a wave instead of a handshake can be charged with meaning and connotations due to the different worlds we all grew up in. This, however, is where the annoyances start.

Societal norms and pastimes seem like a relatively innocent thing. They're introduced over years of like-minded people interacting with each other and serve as social shorthand for different messages. They can even be endearing to the people who understand them, like a newborn baby who can speak fluent Armenian from birth. While their thought processes may be amusingly simple and easy to understand due to the fact of their being a baby, only people who understand Armenian will be able to share the funny little phrases the baby speaks. You do not know Armenian, but you would like to be included in these happy times your Armenian friends are sharing with this strangely intelligent baby. So you begin trying to teach this baby English. Immediately both the baby and your friends come down upon you, saying that you are doing things horribly wrong and are offending the Armenian baby. You do not see any harm in the words you are speaking to the baby nor of the practice of trying to teach the baby English. But apparently, the things you do are deeply offensive to this Armenian baby, even though to the best of your knowledge none of the words you're speaking to the baby are at all offensive to Armenian people. They're just words. How is the word 'dada' equivalent to bringing the Armenian baby to an evocative art museum? How could 'doggy' possibly insinuate that you hate babies entirely?

You are, of course, still trying to learn how the words this Armenian Baby speaks are interpreted by your friends. They do teach you, and you do learn, but it's slow due to the fact that you still don't know any Armenian. It isn't for lack of trying to understand or the lack of care towards offending your friends, but it always gets you wondering when exactly they learned Armenian in the first place, and how exactly it was settled that these thoughts of a baby could be charged with so much meaning and function.

If you should encounter a baby that can speak fluent Armenian, it's probably not your baby, so you should drive back to the hospital and put it back before anyone gets the wrong idea.

* * *

"Don't flub this for me."

The look on Coran's face couldn't be more disinterested if it tried. And Squirtle really wasn't appreciating it. She continued, "I'm taking a huge risk by bringing you with me on this trip. I hope you realize that."

"I thought I was your employee or whatever," Coran retorted, looking at her with a sideways glance. His face was currently directed at what Squirtle could only assume was the single most exciting cloud populating the sky. She wasn't sure. She hadn't looked. She was too busy trying to burn a hole into the stupid riolu's forehead.

"You are," she admitted through gritted teeth. "But that doesn't mean that you get every privilege in the known universe. Your whole escapade earlier with the name stuff isn't going to fly when you meet with people other than me."

Coran's scarlet eyes locked with hers, ripped away from the sky by her words. "I still don't really get what you're talking about there. Coran is my name. Why is that such a weird thing with you?"

Squirtle put a paw to the side of her head, groaning inwardly. "Names are intimate," she said slowly, chewing on the words as if they were a steak that had been cooked for a total of seven seconds.

The two of them stood outside Squirtle's house. The early afternoon sun let its rays rain down on the meadow to the west, glancing off of the two bickering pokémon outside. It seemed like it was going to be a hot summer day from the look of the cloudless sky, a day that Squirtle was not going to be looking forward to spending out and about the Nuzlocke marketplace. She was about to blow off the last of her coin on expedition stock. All that, she noted grimly, while dragging along a socially inept drifter mutt she hired on a desperate final gambit.

"Look. I'm just going to keep it simple for you. What's your name?"

"Coran."

"Wrong."

This made the riolu frown deeply in confusion. "What do you want me to say then? You want me to lie?"

"You say, 'Riolu.'"

"That's not my name, though," Coran said, standing up straight. "My name is Coran."

"No, that's-" Squirtle inhaled sharply through her nose, racking her brain for any sort of method to explain this simple concept to someone like an infant who had never heard of this sort of thing before. "Alright, so, yes. Your personal name is Coran."

"Personal name?" Coran echoed incredulously.

Squirtle interjected. "Let me finish. Your personal name is just that. Personal. You don't tell it to anyone except the people that you're personally attached to. Friends, family, significant others, that sort of thing."

Coran didn't say anything, but Squirtle could tell by the way that his cheeks were pushing his eyes up into an irritatingly familiar expression of bewilderment that he wasn't entirely getting it. She continued.

"For people that don't fit that bill, you use your species name. It's less intimate, and people can generally guess what it is just by looking at you."

"Hold on," Coran interrupted, holding up a paw. "What do you mean, 'species name'? What does that mean?"

"You can't be serious." Squirtle's tone and jaw felt like they were dropping at the same time. "Riolu. Your species name is Riolu. You're a riolu. That's what you are, you're a riolu, I'm an eevee, this is a house, and that's a sky."

Coran drew back, his face sporting a mild scowl. "Alright, alright, you don't have to give me the preschool routine. Fine. Ask me the dumb question again."

Squirtle paused to take another deep breath. She was well past doubting herself about whether hiring this bozo was worth it. She wasn't sure it was. But at this point, she was at her wit's end, so she wasn't about to start second-guessing herself when she only had one guess left.

"What's your name?" she asked, her voice flat and emotionless.

Coran took a moment to pose with dripping saccharine sarcasm, his paws curled beneath his chin as he bent down to Squirtle's height. "Rioooooluuuu," he drawled.

Squirtle slapped him.

o o o

The Nuzlocke marketplace was never too busy. That was something Squirtle liked about the town. With a place so low in ambition, there were never too many pokémon clamouring for groceries and supplies at once. That was of course barring holidays, but it was the beginning of summer so there wouldn't be any of that until the Festival of the Tides in a month.

The sun had risen in the sky as the afternoon wore on, and it was starting to take its toll on both Squirtle and her companion. They sat at a small table, beneath a parasol that served to shield them from the heat.

"I don't get why I have to carry all this junk," Coran complained, lifting a bag with a small number of groceries onto the table so he could get a better look at what was inside it.

"You're a fighting-type," Squirtle said simply. "You're naturally predisposed to have an easier time with physical tasks."

Coran frowned and swivelled his head away from the bag to meet Squirtle's eyes. "I'm not super educated in this stuff, but that sounds kind of racist."

Squirtle's ears pricked, and she mirrored his odd look. "It's a compliment, though. I just complimented your physique."

The riolu simply shrugged half-heartedly and returned his attention to rifling through the bag. "Whatever you have to say to feel better about yourself, I guess."

Squirtle decided not to say anything. Coran had been pretty well-behaved so far during this trip, so she wasn't about to tempt fate and get after him for some weird remarks he was making. Maybe this is some sort of test he's giving me, Squirtle thought to herself as she recalled her mom's words about bullies around where she grew up. Something about not reacting to the stuff they said.

Was Coran bullying her? He wasn't supposed to be able to do that!

"Are we getting lunch anytime soon?" Coran asked, lifting the bag off the table to set it on the ground beside him. "I'm getting kinda hungry, and this whole setup is reminding me of a food court." He gestured to the table they were sitting at, and the others like it scattered around the area.

"After we're finished getting supplies," Squirtle responded, running a checklist of what she still needed through her head. "Could be a couple more hours, though."

Coran whined. "Seriously? Ugh, this is painful..."

Again, Squirtle didn't respond. She just shuffled herself off of the bench, stretching her legs a little. It was nice to get that little respite from the sun, but she was feeling pretty hungry, too. And since she didn't want to spend any of her supply money on food, she'd have to get everything she needed before dipping into it for anything else.

This is what you get for not budgeting correctly, Squirtle thought sourly to herself. Course, budgeting is always easier to do when you aren't destitute.

Coran took Squirtle's actions as a non-verbal hint to get going and walked around the table to stand behind her after picking up the grocery bag and slinging it around his shoulder. "Alright, where to next?"

"Banette's Bazaar," Squirtle said. "It's a general store, so I get everything there that I can. I'm pretty good friends with the owners, too, so we do favours for each other every so often."

"Sounds like a good setup," Coran remarked, following her as she walked down the colourful streets. She remained focused, but every time she looked back, she could see Coran taking in the marketplace, looking left and right again and again. He reminded her of the tourists back in her hometown, staring up in awe at the massive buildings soaring up into the sky, accompanied by the ever-present sound of the surf crashing against the shore. The ocean spray tinged the air with a salty texture unlike any other city on the continent, feeding into the fishy aromas of the Sea Bounty Market on Pike Street.

"Hey, Eevee." Coran's voice snapped her out of her daydream. "Isn't that the place you said we were going to?"

She turned around to look at where Coran was pointing, and her eyes lit up in recognition. She'd nearly passed right by the stall when she was lost in thought. It was a decently-sized building compared to the rest around it. The customer side was rather small, with a counter made of a purplish wood sporting both a large plaque informing the customer of sales and inventory, and a rather bored-looking shuppet staring down at something behind the counter Squirtle couldn't see. A soft purple banner hung taut above the stall, with golden yellow words boasting the name of the shop in stylized zipper-like words.

"Yeah, that's the one," Squirtle said idly, approaching the stand. "Hey, Shuppet. I'm back."

The ghost jolted, looking up at Squirtle with a startled expression. The sudden motion caused the magenta flower perched on her head to fall off, drifting to the ground. Shuppet was quick to catch it and replace it next to the spike, giving herself a moment before putting on a wide smile. "Welcome to Banette's Bazaar, Nuzlocke's one-stop shop for all your exploration needs! My name is Shuppet, how may I help you?"

"Wow," Coran remarked mildly with a laugh. He didn't say anything else, thank Uxie, but Squirtle whipped back to shoot him a quick glare for good measure.

After turning back to face the clerk, Squirtle smiled back. "Just the usual supplies will be good," she said, her eyes drifting to the plaque of items they offered.

"Sure thing," Shuppet said cheerily as she turned to the back shelves, levitating a myriad of objects to the front counter. "How did the blast seeds work out for you?"

Squirtle winced at the memory of them. Shuppet had recommended them to Squirtle after she'd told her about the lack of muscle her business was suffering from. Shuppet had marketed them as an 'extra punch anyone can use.' Squirtle had taken three of the small red seeds with the instruction to bite down on them while looking at your target. She had only tried one, and the moment she had bitten down, the seed had exploded into a fiery inferno. In her mouth. She'd let out a cry of pain, and the fire bellowed out and basically incinerated an attacking bellsprout.

"Effective," she said weakly, involuntarily biting her lips at the memory of the heat. "But I don't think they're worth a repeat purchase. I actually have muscle now."

"New workout regimen, then?" Shuppet asked idly.

Squirtle shook her head. "New recruit. This is Riolu."

That caused the clerk to pause, and she turned back to look at the two of them with a new interest that made Coran behind her shift uncomfortably. "Riolu? I haven't seen you around town before. Where are you from?"

"Uh." Coran froze. A quick glance back at his face told Squirtle all she needed to know - he was socially paralyzed. She had to jump in quick.

"Mist Continent," she said quickly. "Sorry, they speak a different dialect over there, so he has trouble understanding us sometimes-"

A sudden pain shot up Squirtle's spine as she felt something slam down on the tip of her tail. Her eyes squinted shut, and she looked back at Coran with a furious expression.

"What the hell was that?!" Coran hissed lowly, just enough that Shuppet wouldn't be able to hear.

"I had to come up with something!" Squirtle shot back, yanking her tail out from under his foot. "You were acting all weird!"

"Yeah, so you make me out to be a caveman or something!?"

"Caveman?!"

"Is, uh, something wrong?" Shuppet's uneasy interjection snapped them both out of the argument.

"Oh!" Squirtle looked back at Shuppet, whose smile was now a little more obviously strained. "No, no, sorry, I was just, uh...translating."

"I just need some help sometimes," Coran added through gritted teeth. "I'm usually fine."

"Oh, okay." Shuppet's expression didn't change, but both Squirtle and Coran let out imperceptible sighs of relief as she went back to bagging. "Let's hope this recruit works out better than the other ones, huh? Remember that Servine guy?"

"He wasn't the worst one," Squirtle said, rolling her eyes at the memory of him. "Dunsparce was definitely the worst one. But I'm really hoping that Riolu works out. I don't really have the funds to try again if I have to fire him."

Shuppet's psychic paused, and her gaze that was once focused on lowering a jar of small blue orbs into the shopping bag raised to look at Squirtle with a look of scrutiny.

"You're not going to try and push another discount on me, are you?" she asked flatly.

"What? Discount? No no no, I've never asked for discounts!" Squirtle laughed nervously, feeling herself break out into a cold sweat.

"You've asked for discounts."

"Alright, I've asked for discounts in the past," Squirtle admitted, "but I'm not asking for one now!"

"Then what are you asking for?"

"Nothing."

Shuppet didn't reply, wearing an expression of impatient doubt that said everything she needed to communicate.

Squirtle squirmed under the gaze, unwilling to spit it out. She had her pride to consider, and Coran saw all of this, right behind her! She had to take a stand against this derision. Otherwise, he'd think she was even bigger of a joke than before!

"I'm just your biggest customer, you know," she said, adopting a tone of haughtiness to combat the cold sweat she'd broken. "Nobody else in this town buys nearly as many dungeoneering supplies as I do. Not to mention, I'm often the one to resupply the shop when Banette isn't available to do it!"

"Yes," Shuppet said slowly. "And we pay you for those resupply jobs. And you pay us for the supplies. That's how business works, Squirtle."

"I know that's how business works, I'm a business owner too! I just...you know, I've had terrible luck the past few months, and we haven't been turning a profit due to the changing nature of the market." Squirtle's mind raced, babbling out terms she wasn't even entirely sure she understood as she tried to salvage the negotiation.

"Hey, I saw orbs like those for a hundred dollars cheaper a piece in a shop down the street."

Squirtle felt her heart freeze up. What was he doing?!

Shuppet seemed caught off guard as well, looking down at the jar still hovering over the bag. She turned to Coran and put on another smile, this one also strained. "Well, yes, that's a specialty store that only sells orbs. Since their supply is limited to that sort of stock, it only makes sense that their prices would be slightly lower."

"That's the case with a whole bunch of this stuff though," Coran said, pointing idly at the plaque. "I noticed that a whole slew of this junk is marked up. The ones with the pictures I recognize, anyway."

"This is a convenience store," Shuppet said quickly. "Sure, our products are marked up somewhat from the base market value, but you're paying for the convenience of it all being in one place! Time is money, after all, and if you're going to be walking around the market in the hot summer sun to save three hundred poké, then that's your priority to take. You could save time by coming here and getting everything at once, so you can get back to earning money faster."

"Coran...what are you doing...?" Squirtle heard a high-pitched whistling in her ears. He was ruining everything!

"I mean, sure, but like..." Coran frowned, ignoring Squirtle. "I'm not going to pretend I'm good at math, but if the orbs are a hundred dollars more here, and the stuff I recognize on that thing is cheaper in other places, then that's...more than three hundred dollars we're saving, right?" He looked down at Squirtle. "'S far as I know, we're not doing anything else today, so why not just go to the other places and get the stuff cheaper?"

Wait.

Was this working?

Squirtle quickly latched onto what he was saying. "You do have a point," she said, injecting an air of regality into her voice. "This was all I had planned in terms of revenue today. I was just going to spend the rest of it training you, and I could honestly do that while we went to the other shops."

Shuppet's smile was all but gone now, pressed into a hard line. "...Alright. Fine. I'll match the prices of the other guys in town. But only for today, okay? And you owe me."

Squirtle shrugged nonchalantly. "Have it your way, then."

The ghost fixed her with a hard look, continuing to bag the products. In a moment's notice, though, her stony visage broke as she burst into a quiet fit of giggles. "...Holy crap, man."

"What?" Squirtle asked cautiously, wondering what caused the sudden change in demeanour.

"You had better keep that guy, Squirtle," Shuppet said, smiling despite herself. "He's good."

Squirtle's gaze once again drifted to Coran, who was looking at the plaque, squinting at pecha berries for a hundred and fifty poké.

o o o

"How did you know?" Squirtle pressed Coran, watching him intently as he messily horked down a tamato-lettuce wrap.

"Mrff." Coran's voice was muffled as he held a finger up, straining his face as he gulped down a large mouthful of sandwich. A loud sigh later, he replied. "Know what?"

"How did you know how to negotiate with her?" Squirtle said, disregarding his appaling eating habits. "She's really good at what she does! How did you know what words to say to her?"

"I didn't," he said plainly before taking another bite. "I wash jusht lookin' around while we were walkin', and shaw-"

"Riolu, please, not with your mouth full..."

He swallowed. "Saw cheaper prices," he finished. "Though jeez, a hundred and fifty dollars for a berry? What the hell, dude?"

"They aren't dollars," Squirtle said, reaching down and tugging her coinpurse free from her side. She spilled out a few gold and silver coins onto the table, and both she and Coran watched them clatter against the cut stone for a moment before coming to a stop. "This is poké. It's the currency we use."

"Well, I figured that out," Coran said, waving his paw dismissively. "I just have no idea what one poké is worth, or whatever."

"One poké is worth..." she frowned a little. Squirtle didn't really know what one poké was worth. "Well, a single berry's usually anywhere from fifty to a hundred," she said, "depending on how rare it is."

"Mm, yeah, but what's one worth?" Coran said.

"I... I don't know," she replied. "It's such a small amount that I don't think it's worth anything."

"What about the training you were talking about?"

Squirtle swore she felt whiplash from that. "Uh. Well, I was going to evaluate you on your combat, so I could, uh, see how well you can fight in the field."

"Right, because I'm a fighting-type." Coran's attention went back to the wrap. He mumbled something to himself, squinting at the ingredients before taking another bite.

"Well, anyone in my business has to know how to fight, whether they're fighting-type or not," Squirtle said.

"But you can't," Coran said bluntly. "That's why you hired me."

Out of nowhere, Squirtle felt her blood begin to boil. "It's not like I haven't tried!" she said, a little louder than she had meant to. "I've been at this whole shebang longer than anyone else around here has any right to claim! It's not my fault if I'm just not as good at it!"

Coran stared at her for a pregnant pause, a little taken aback by the outburst. He shoved what was left of the wrap into his mouth and finished it off quickly, earning a disgusted sound from the poor eevee who was left waiting for a response.

"I don't know much about this whole culture I've been dropped into," Coran said slowly, leaning back and bracing his legs against the underside of the table to keep himself from falling over. "The name stuff is dumb, the whole profiling thing you used on me is kinda iffy, and I'm pretty sure that person running the shop is dead." He paused again, staring up at the sky to think. "We've kind of been bitches to each other, I think."

Squirtle's brow furrowed. She knew for sure that he had been a huge jerk to her since they met, taking advantage of the fact that he was her last chance. And Uxie knew that he was going to keep doing that. But she had been perfectly civil with him, what with his memory loss and complete cluelessness about how to act.

"So," Coran said finally, "I'll stop ribbing you so bad if you start treating me like an actual person."

"What does that mean?"

Coran fixed her with a glare that almost froze her in place. "I mean stop treating me like I'm dumb. I'm not that dumb."

Squirtle thought about it. And now that she was, Squirtle realized that she hadn't been treating Coran reasonably either. Just as he was taking advantage of her with him being her last chance, she was putting a lot of pressure on him. He had very little knowledge of anything around here, and as far as his options went, it was either working for her or living on the streets.

She slipped off the bench and offered up a paw to shake. "You stop purposefully making my life miserable, and I'll start giving you the benefit of the doubt. Deal?"

He looked down at her from the bench with mild surprise, but hopped down and clasped her paw in his. "Deal." Suddenly, he grinned. "And you have to introduce me to some cute chicks around town because there is absolutely no way I'm gonna be doing anything with my employer or a ghost."

Squirtle slapped him.


	4. Chapter 4

**_Chapter 4_**

A leap of faith can be described as taking action in blind belief of someone or something when the outcome is not sure. This sounds rightfully scary, but leaps of faith are frequent and abound in daily life. This is, of course, referring to the figurative kind. Many leaps of faith do not actually involve leaping of any kind, and for the most part, jumping is an action many people can take with the confidence of knowing the outcome.

Faith, however, is more or less always involved in leaps of faith - at the very least more involved than leaping. It can be described as having complete and full trust in something even though this something you have faith in cannot reciprocate your trust with certainty. Some parents name their children Faith for this very reason. They may not know what their child will do when they grow up. They may become a rock climber, a ballet dancer, or a gymnast, but giving the child the name 'Faith' displays their parents' unending trust in them. This act could also be considered a leap of faith, as they are putting expectations on a child to be worthy of trust before they have even cried their first cry.

Now you may be asking yourself what use leaps of faith are, and the answer to that varies depending on who you are yourself. Leaps of Faith are very often useful to Faith, as one does not generally leap without purpose and so when Faith leaps, as described before, the outcome is inevitable and beneficial. Since Faith is a rock climbing ballerina gymnast, she might find herself leaping quite often and considers leaping to be one of her strengths. But because of the pressure her parents had placed on her since birth, Faith is not as skilled at leaps of faith. As a calculated woman Faith prefers to be assured that a specific reaction will result from her action. But when she is standing on the edge of a support beam that is slowly decaying from a fire set by a rival troupe and the person on the ground floor is desperately urging her to jump, but smoke obfuscates her vision and makes it nigh impossible to see where she would land, Faith freezes. Her leaps, which have brought her to where she is now, will not come. The leap-of-faith leap of Faith will not come.

Covering your mouth and nose with a wet rag can help filter out the smoke of a fire to ease your breathing.

* * *

"Not funny."

"I'm not making a joke, Coran," Squirtle said. Her tone was exasperated, but she couldn't help but smile a little from the irony of the situation. "The fact that you're doing a fetch quest has nothing to do with the fact that you're a dog."

"You've already said some racist stuff before," Coran retorted, jerking his head back to the direction of the market. "I wouldn't put it past you to make a joke like this, too."

"Oh, come on, we were over that! There's nothing racist about fighting-types being more capable at physical tasks than a normal type!"

"I'd believe you if you weren't telling me to 'go fetch.'" Coran's voice was dry, leaning the stool back casually from Squirtle's coffee table so he could rest his heels on the surface. He folded his paws behind his head and closed his eyes. "Honestly, it's like you aren't even trying to hide it."

Squirtle scowled a little, pacing back and forth between the job posting and her budget outline for the next month. This wasn't going to be a great source of income - fetch quests usually weren't - but she had to evaluate Coran to see where she should start with training. It was in an area with a notoriety for feral sightings, so chances were good that the two of them would be facing some less than friendly Pokémon on their way. Of course, Coran didn't know that.

"What am I even getting?" he asked, his tone as disinterested as he could make it.

Squirtle wasn't falling for it. "Well, first off, we're going together," she said, walking over to his side of the table and nudging his back to shunt him into a proper sitting position. "Four legs on the floor, Coran. You're going to dent the hardwood."

He scoffed but didn't say anything back.

"We're getting an heirloom someone lost in Thornike Woods," she continued. "Fetch quests are usually the kinds of things I end up doing, which means that they're going to be the kinds of things you end up doing. We do things for people they don't want to do. The more dangerous the thing is, the better we get paid. And most people in this town can't be bothered to leave their houses, let alone get something they dropped in semi-treacherous territory."

"So it's not because I'm a dog."

"No, it's because you're a dog," Squirtle shot back with a snarky tone.

Coran sat up, resting his elbows on the table as he slid the request paper towards himself to look it over. "Alright, so anything else we should know about this?"

"The client is Yamask, so the heirloom makes sense. Yamasks, in particular, put a lot of importance on their past, being ghost-types and all-"

Coran cleared his throat.

"I swear I'm not racist," Squirtle said dryly.

"No, that's not...I mean, you are, but," Coran sat forward. "Ghost-type? Like, this guy's dead?"

"Uh." Squirtle frowned. "I mean, I don't know. Some ghost-types are. Some are born as ghosts, and some become ghosts. I don't really understand how it works. I've never asked."

"That clerk," Coran continued as if he hadn't been listening to Squirtle at all. "At the bazaar. Was she dead?"

"You're asking a lot of weird questions, Coran," Squirtle said, squinting across the table at the riolu. "Where are you from?"

Coran's arm reached across his chest and clutched at the back of his neck. He bowed his head and broke eye contact with Squirtle. "I dunno. Like I said, I don't like it any more than you do, but all I know is that I don't know a lot of shit I'm supposed to know, apparently."

"You know enough to call me racist," Squirtle said after a small pause, trying to bring a bit of levity into the situation.

That earned a small chuckle. "Anyone could tell you that."

"You could be from the Mist Continent," Squirtle offered. "I know they're pretty secluded. There's a lot of colonies and settlements over there that stay separate from each other."

"Maybe?" Coran shrugged helplessly, still gripping the back of his neck. "I have no idea."

It wasn't hard to see the guy wasn't feeling too hot about the conversation, so Squirtle decided to drop it for now. "Don't worry about it," she said in an ever-so-slightly softer tone. "This sort of thing is supposed to wear off. We'll get you to an expert or something if it doesn't."

He nodded, staring down at the table. "Heirloom," he mumbled, tapping the paper.

"Right," Squirtle said, directing her attention back to the request. "Looks like we're going for a locket. Alright, good, it's not a mask."

"I'm guessing a yamask's mask is pretty important," Coran said, his words muffled by the arms his face was buried in.

Squirtle nodded in agreement. "They're meant to be the face the yamask had in a past life or something," she said. "I don't really believe in that circle of life stuff." Her eyes lifted up from the paper to look at Coran, expecting another question. But he said nothing.

Jeez, she thought. That bad, huh?

"Before we go out there, we need to do something first." Squirtle's tone rose, and she stood up rigidly from the table with it.

That was enough to catch Coran's attention, making him lift his head to meet Squirtle's gaze.

"We're going to test how well you can fight."

o o o

"I've never done martial arts," Coran said plainly, staring at Squirtle with all the poise and grace of a schoolkid put on the spot.

"No excuses," Squirtle barked, lowering her head and tensing her muscles to get into a ready stance. "Just do what comes naturally."

"I can't hit you, though! You're a girl!" Coran protested.

"Then these next few minutes are going to suck," Squirtle growled, bounding forwards like a spring. She angled her head to the side and quickly closed the distance between them, slamming into Coran's front. Time froze for a split second. A resounding thunk echoed through Squirtle's skull. Gritting her teeth in discomfort, she staggered back and raised her head up to look at Coran, who was currently sprawled out on the ground.

"W...what the shit was that?!" Coran sat up slowly, his body trembling with the effort as he clutched his stomach.

Squirtle was rubbing at the side of her head. "Ouch, your core's like a rock wall."

"What the hell, man!?" Bending over, Coran pushed himself to his feet, still shaking a little. "Why'd you go and do that?"

"I was holding back," Squirtle said plainly, getting back into a ready position. "The ferals out there aren't gonna be so kind."

In the back of Squirtle's mind, a seed of doubt sprouted. This guy couldn't be inept at combat. That was the entire reason she'd hired him in the first place!

"What am I supposed to do?" Coran tried to mimic the spirit of Squirtle's battle-ready stance, bending his legs and putting his fists up. "...This?"

"You have three choices," Squirtle said. "Fight back, dodge, or run away."

Coran began replying, but Squirtle was no longer paying attention. She charged forward again, trying to recall those familiar inner feelings that surfaced with using proper techniques. At the moment, Squirtle was just making things up as she went. There was definitely a better way to go about this, but for the time being she wasn't too concerned with her own ability. She was testing Coran.

Where was he, by the way? She should have definitely connected with his chest by now. She slowed to a stop and looked up in confusion.

Her head slammed into the grassy dirt before Squirtle even realized what had happened. A searing pain rippled through her side, and it took her a couple of seconds to register that Coran had come in from where she couldn't have seen him and punched her.

"Oh, my God. Oh my God, I punched my boss." He sounded panicked. Which she understood.

"...Don't know if you recall, Coran," Squirtle grunted, pushing herself up to her feet. "But your punch is kind of the whole reason I hired you." She shook her head, feeling the pain in her side fade. "Let's get serious."

Squirtle took a deep breath, once again tuning out Coran's reply. The scraping sensation of dirt stung the soles of her paws as she whipped to her right and raked her claws once, twice against Coran's front. A stiff pressure interrupted her follow-through, and she barely had time to notice a black paw clutching her ankle before an impact smashed her stomach up into her chest, sending her reeling back in breathlessness. Her eyes focused on Coran, who was drawing back his right arm for a fraction of a second. Squirtle rolled head over heels, her nose aching from the forceful shove Coran had treated her to.

"Not bad," she mumbled to herself with a sort of satisfaction. "Let's get some practice in." She shook her head to stave off the discombobulation and laughed slightly. "Alright, rookie, let's see what you can really do."

"I've been showing you what I can do already!" Coran's voice was laden with an overwhelmed tone of panic.

Squirtle charged forward. Coran brought his arms up to block the attack. Instead of moving in head-on, though, Squirtle zig-zagged behind him and slammed her rear leg into his back.

Coran let out a gasp and toppled. Squirtle quickly followed up by leaping onto him and slamming his face into the dirt.

"How's the floor taste?" Squirtle taunted, panting as she tried to catch her breath.

Coran didn't reply for once, she noted coyly. Before she could point this out, though, she was suddenly thrown off. Coran's foot impacted her stomach, sending her toppling through the air. She crashed into the dirt.

"Try tasting the floor, and tell me how the floor tastes after you try it," Coran said, coughing.

Squirtle winced. "That was super weak, Coran."

"Listen, I'm not good at one-liners!"

Squirtle pushed herself up, sidestepping around Coran in a slow circle. They stared each other down, both looking for some opportunity to make their move.

"I've done this before," Squirtle mumbled to herself. "I've done this before, I can do it again." Her ears folded behind her head as she tried to manually stir up some energy from within her.

Her efforts were interrupted. Coran ran towards her with a scream and jumped into the air.

Squirtle was unable to react in time. She leapt to the side, but Coran's paws slammed into her rear. The blades of grass scuffed her soles as she spun like a top. A metallic smell played at the edges of Squirtle's nose. She tried to focus.

Coran wasn't letting up. He turned around and brought his knee up into Squirtle's side. A bolt shot up her spine. Grabbing desperately onto that feeling, Squirtle shut her eyes.

"Come on...!"

Two hands slammed down on either side of Squirtle's back. The knee returned. It drove up into her stomach, causing her to wheeze. Even with her eyes closed, she felt her vision begin to swim. She'd have to act fast. Otherwise, this would be over quick.

"Come on!"

An electrical sensation danced across Squirtle's fur. She directed it back to her tail and felt the familiar glowing heat.

She smashed her head into Coran's side. His grip faltered.

She sank her teeth into his shoulder. He pulled away.

She leapt into the air and whipped her tail towards Coran, feeling the energy shoot off like molten lava. Stars swirled in his vision for a fraction of a second before he was blasted back, twitching on the grass.

Squirtle's throat was parched. "Didn't think I could still do that," she panted, sucking air into her body with the taste of steel tingling against her tongue.

"...Wh...what the absolute hell..." Coran's arms were shaking as he tried to push himself up into a sitting position. Squirtle walked over and moved her head under his chest, helping him up.

"I haven't been able to do Swift like that in a long time," she said, sitting down beside him as she caught her breath.

"Swift...?" Coran echoed, giving her a cursory glance. He didn't look like he was able to do it for long, however, and his head hung as he put a paw against his heaving chest.

"I think riolus can do it, too," Squirtle said. "Course, you'd have to learn it first."

Coran waited a few seconds, his breath still high-pitched and wheezing. "How did I do?"

"Good," Squirtle replied, standing up. She looked up at the sky, now grey with rainclouds. "A little unrefined, but I think you'll do well."

"Can we get lunch?" Coran asked, wincing. "I'm starved."

"That sounds good," she agreed, frowning up at the sky. "It's probably closer to supper, actually."

"Okay, cool," Coran said, bringing a paw above his face as smatterings of raindrops began to fall from the sky.

o o o

"God, that came out of nowhere." Coran frowned, leaning against the table as he looked outside.

The hot summer day had quickly morphed into something much wetter. The whistling wind howled outside as Squirtle and Coran sat at the coffee table, eating a few sandwiches Coran had made from their shopping trip. The draft was warm but unpleasantly humid as it snaked in through the crack at the bottom of the door.

Squirtle set down a glass of water, sharing Coran's view. "Absolutely. I thought we were over this weather already." She frowned. "Guess we're going to be trudging through the mud when we start the job, huh?"

Coran took another bite of his sandwich. "I mean I think it's gonna dry up by tomorrow," he said. "'Specially if it's gonna be as hot then as it was today."

"You want to wait until tomorrow?"

He looked up at Squirtle. "Uh, yeah, of course, I do. I don't want to go out to a dangerous place where dangerous people attack you at night. That's just stupid."

"I dunno." Squirtle said. "I'd like to get it done ASAP, you know? And besides, it's going to be better if we go at night."

"Why on earth would it be better if we go at night? I'm saying bull to that." Coran got up from the table with a sense of finality. "I'm going to bed."

"We just had dinner, there are at least four hours left in the day!"

"Bedtime," Coran called over his shoulder as he sauntered to the guest room.

Squirtle stared at him as he rounded the corner and disappeared from view, resting her head on the table.

Okay, sure. Fine. Coran could have it his way. She'd been pushing him way too hard already, so if he wants to go to Thornike Woods in the middle of the daytime, they could go to Thornike Woods in the middle of the daytime. Maybe then he'd listen to her.

As she began to clean up the small mess from dinner, Squirtle's mind began to wander again. She'd won that practice fight out there. Coran battled as if he'd never battled before. Maybe wherever he was from was a pacifist tribe? But then why is he so rude?

Something was off about him. And whether that 'offness' would be a help or a hindrance to Squirtle was yet to be seen. She got the feeling that he hadn't been entirely honest with her, and that didn't sit right. She'd fired people for less, Squirtle remembered grimly, cursing her previous hastiness back when she could have afforded it. She'd have to talk to Coran about it sometime. But now seemed too sudden.

She gave the short hallway to the guest room a pensive look before shuffling the rest of the dishes into the sink to soak.

They didn't need to soak, but she didn't really feel like washing them right now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Apologies for this taking so long! I was in a big stint of writer's block. But I'm hoping that getting this new bit of content up and hearing what you all have to say about it will help motivate me to publish more often. It's hard to write to a wall, but all too easy to write to an engaged audience.**

**With that in mind, please review! It means the world to me! And I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

**_Chapter 5_**

The society that many people reading this find themselves in is one built on the foundation of questions. This is a safe assumption to make because if it weren't built on the backs of people who asked questions, quite a large number of things would be missing from your everyday life. Many things that you enjoy today are only here because someone thought to ask a question about why they didn't have a product or item that filled a particular need. The phone was not invented until someone asked why they could not speak with someone from very far away. The sniper rifle was not invented until someone asked why they could not dispose of someone from very far away.

Some people estimate that the average person asks upwards of twelve questions a day. These questions can range from the simple, such as 'Excuse me, sir, but do you have the time?' or 'What shall we do this evening?' to the specific, including 'Yes, sir, I realize you have told me it is seven forty-three in the evening, but _do you have the time?' _or 'Can one of you fine fellows provide me with an alibi for yesterday evening?'

Some questions may not have readily available answers. And while asking a question without a solution is a thoroughly frustrating experience, it is one that brings about the most change. If we all suddenly decided to stop questioning things, we would go about living each day as if it were the same as yesterday. We would never get anywhere new as we would never wonder why certain things were the way they were. In this way, questions can be regarded as some of the most critical parts of any society we decide to build, and if anyone ever tells you to stop asking questions, they are a dangerous person.

However, it is easy to go too far with questions. Many people find themselves in this pitfall. After all, did this book not just say three sentences prior that anyone telling you not to ask questions is dangerous? While that is true, questions can be a somewhat paralyzing drug. It is all too simple to sit there in your own room and ask questions, and then question the answers you come to, and question the questions you ask as you ask them. You can hem and haw all you like about wind speed and bullet weight and the distance between you and your target, but by the time you come to a satisfying conclusion you may find that not only had your target moved on, but your marriage had crumbled while you laid on the rooftop looking through a viewfinder, leaving you in another storm of questions as to why your spouse was able to leave you before you starved from forgetting to eat - perhaps they were less satisfied with your union than even you were? Or maybe she was a bit peeved at having the laser of a sniper rifle pointed at her back. Like with many things in life, as frustrating as this truth can be, the trick comes with finding a happy medium.

On a surprisingly global scale, marriage counselling seems to work better than a sniper rifle would in nearly every single circumstance.

* * *

"Thornike Woods? Really?"

The morning air nipped at Squirtle's nose as she looked down at her map. She was trying desperately to keep herself from entering the conversation Coran had already involved himself in.

"Yeah, I'm going to be doing my first fetch quest there," he said, puffing out his chest with a tone of pride that had been noticeably absent when he'd been accusing Squirtle of dog-based racism yesterday. "We're going to be getting a mask back for a yam."

"An heirloom for a yamask," Squirtle mumbled to herself, tracing a paw from Nuzlocke to Thornike Woods to try and figure out what the best route would be.

The servine that Coran had been talking to nodded in understanding. "Ah, yes, that would be Yamask," he remarked, looking up at the sky. "Always losing things in the most suspect of places. Though do you think it would be safe going to Thornike Woods now?"

"Squirtle wanted to go last night for some reason, but I told her to wait until today. Why? What's up with Thornike Woods?"

"Haven't you heard? There's been a report from the Hasash Weather Institute-"

"Servine, this is a new recruit, please don't try and terrify him with your crackpot theories!" Squirtle looked up, her voice taking on a sudden tone of annoyance.

The grass snake jerked his head back, orange eyes wide with surprise. "Why, Eevee, I'm merely looking out for you and your employee! And if the Hasash Weather Institute says that there have been recorded seismic activities in the northeastern area of the Bay Continent - including, mind you, Thornike Woods - then I would think it'd be prudent for someone heading there to know!"

Squirtle sighed. "Thank you for your concern, Servine, but I'm sure Riolu and I will be fine. Come on, Riolu, we're losing daylight."

"Uh, sure, yeah." Coran gave the snake a wary look. The servine exchanged it with a helpless shrug. He turned around, his tail sweeping with a flourish, and walked away towards the Nuzlocke market.

The eastern edge of Nuzlocke always came a little too quickly. The market was right next to it, but after that, there weren't any settlements that extended beyond it. It was as if there was an invisible wall that separated Nuzlocke from the plains on all sides of it. The soil was suitable for tilling out here, the blades of grass were all short and of a healthy - if somewhat pale - hue, and most of the time the weather was alright if a bit cloudy. Farmers would be able to make a pretty good living out here. But the ones that did decide to settle down this far up north were all on the south side. Maybe it was just that, they felt they were too far up north already. Squirtle supposed she understood that much. Being up here was a far cry from her home back in Cape Coast. She didn't even know that farmers were still a thing before she moved up here.

"Who was that?" Coran asked.

Squirtle turned to him, snapped back into the real world. "Who?"

"That snake dude. You called him Servine, I think? He said something about seismic activity."

Squirtle nodded slowly, parsing her words. "That was Servine, yes. He was one of my former employee prospects, a few before you."

"He seemed nice," Coran remarked. "Why didn't you take him on?"

"That isn't important to you," Squirtle said. "Remember, this is your trial period still, so you should be working on making sure you're useful to this business."

"I'm already hired, though, aren't I?" Coran crossed his arms, picking up the pace to match Squirtle's. He looked down at her with a confused expression. "I signed those papers and everything."

"Yes, but you're still on probation. Look, I don't want to get into all the nitty-gritty when we're out in the field."

"Literally."

"...Good one."

* * *

Thornike Woods was not a forest in the traditional sense. When Squirtle conjured up the image of a forest in her head, one word that she'd use to describe it would be 'horizontal.'

Thornike Woods was not 'horizontal.'

The coniferous trees seemed to sprout out of a sheer cliff face like weeds, jutting out at an odd angle parallel neither to the ground nor the wall of stone and dirt from which they came. The path into the woods started as a gentle incline, but as it disappeared into the thicket of trees the way spiked suddenly, leading to a very unfriendly-looking hiking trail. As Squirtle's eyes looked across the dark thorny treetops, she could see small shadowy figures flitting from branch to branch. She sighed to herself. This wasn't going to be a fun mission.

"Yamask lost his heirloom in there?" Coran's voice was despondent. "What the heck was a ghost doing in a place like this, anyhow?"

"It isn't our job to ask questions, Coran," Squirtle said smoothly. "We just do what they ask us to do."

"Alright, then, what's this 'heirloom' we're looking for?" Coran continued, trotting behind Squirtle.

"If I had to make a guess, it'd be something that doesn't belong in the woods."

"Helpful."

Squirtle gave Coran a cautionary glare, her ears subconsciously flopping on either side of her head. "Coran. Sometimes we're going to be put into situations where we don't have all of the answers. Maybe we don't know what we're looking for. Maybe we don't know where we're going. Maybe we don't even know what we're supposed to do. But as help-for-hire, we don't ask questions, work with what we're given, and complete the job, alright?"

She looked up at Coran's crimson eyes. They were focused on her with an expression she could only describe to herself as mild disapproval. "So we seriously don't know what we're looking for."

She growled a little and whipped back around, heading into the forest. "It's a pendant. We're looking for a jade pendant."

"Alright," Coran replied, a reproachful tone in his voice. "How big is the forest?"

Squirtle's ears twitched. She looked up at the treetops as they began to shut out some of the sunlight above them. "It isn't huge, but it'd be a pain to comb through the entire thing. What do you think we should do?"

Coran was caught off guard. "What? Why me? You're the expert here, aren't you?"

"Right, but this is your test, remember?" Squirtle reminded him. "I want to see how you'd handle this so I can look at what needs improvement. So you're going to head this mission."

Squirtle couldn't really see it beneath the fur, but judging from his expression Coran's face paled. "I, uh, alright," he said, swallowing a lump in his throat. Squirtle moved out of his way so he could take the lead on the path.

The chatter of birds above them was sparse, but there were enough sounds around for Squirtle to keep a close watch on the canopy above them. Assailants could come from anywhere. Coran wouldn't fare too well against flying foes, so Squirtle would need to watch his back in case they were attacked. Bafflingly, though, Coran didn't even seem to notice the birdsong above them, tapping his chin and looking at the path as it steeped upwards along the cliff face. Squirtle's legs were starting to burn already, and they hadn't even been walking fifteen minutes.

"You said there's feral pokémon here, right?" Coran said, looking back at Squirtle for a moment. She gave him a simple nod, and he turned back around, ambling along the soft dirt road.

"What's your thought process?" Squirtle prodded.

"Well, odds are pretty good that if Yamask dropped their thing, it'd be along here, unless there's some sort of landmark off in the forest I don't know about." Coran's head raised to the bushes that lined the path and the dappled sunlight that illuminated the greenery beyond. As far as either of them could see, it was just flora the whole way. "That's kind of the problem. I don't know what Yamask was doing here with a valuable heirloom. You sure it was _just_ a jade pendant?"

"I don't know," Squirtle said plainly, offering a half-hearted shrug. "All I know is what he put in the request. He was in Thornike Woods, lost his pendant. He said it was an heirloom, and he's going to pay a thousand poké to get it back."

"Is a thousand a lot?"

"It's decent."

Coran fell silent again. Their pace began to pick up as Squirtle dutifully followed behind the riolu, her own evaluations of how he was doing flashing through her mind.

"I just can't get 'why would he come here with a pendant' out of my head," Coran continued. "Like, you made this place sound dangerous. Wild pokémon, that sort of stuff. Why would he come here with something he'd pay a thousand pokeys for? I always thought heirlooms were kept in glass cases in the master bedroom or something."

Squirtle's paw went subconsciously to her own necklace.

"Do you guys treat heirlooms differently here?" Coran turned around to face Squirtle, leaning his back against the thick trunk of a tree just off the path.

Squirtle's paw dropped from her neck. "I don't think we have any sort of protocol for how we treat heirlooms, no," she said, sitting down to wipe her forehead. "I don't know, Coran, maybe this place was just special to him. He could have come here to perform some sort of ritual with it."

Coran nodded to himself and kept walking down the path. The birds were twittering a little louder now, but even so, Squirtle hadn't seen hide nor hair of one. She knew she shouldn't have come here in the day...

"Squirtle, you're sure there's feral pokémon here, right?" Coran stopped in his tracks and looked down at her with a fixed stare.

"Yes," she said emphatically.

"And you said this place is super dangerous."

"Well, not _super_ dangerous-"

"And you wanted to come here at night instead of during the day."

Squirtle didn't say anything.

Coran's feet were shifting in the dirt. He looked antsy. "Look. I'm trying my best to respect you, Squirtle. I told you I'd stop sassing you or whatever, but there's another part to that deal, remember? You not treating me like I'm stupid? Remember that?"

"Coran, calm down-"

"Why haven't we seen anything yet?" He whirled around on his heel and pointed at her accusingly. "The worst bit of danger I've faced so far is almost kinda tripping over a root! I'm seeing you look at the trees like you're expecting something to jump out or whatever, but we haven't _seen_ anything yet. Is this part of the test? Are you still messing with me? What's going on here?"

A pit settled at the bottom of Squirtle's stomach. She stayed silent, merely maintaining Coran's gaze as she tried to think of something to say.

Coran's shoulders sank. "You are messing with me, aren't you." It wasn't a question.

"No, I'm not!" Squirtle spoke up, finally breaking her gaze with Coran to look nervously at the treeline again.

"You think it's funny to haze the new guy, the amnesiac, huh?"

"Coran, I swear, I'm not hazing you!"

"Yeah? Yeah?" Coran balled his fists and took a few quick steps toward Squirtle until he was standing directly over her. It was imposing. "Yeah? You sure about that, boss?"

Squirtle's ears sunk and she slinked backwards to try and get herself a safe distance away. "It's weird to me too, okay?"

Coran didn't move. His fists shook at his sides, and his jaw was clenched into a frustrated grimace.

"I'm going to punch a tree, so I don't punch you," he said in a tone that was terrifyingly calm, measured, and trembling.

Squirtle was trembling, too. "Okay," she whispered.

Raising his fist up, Coran let out a furious yell and swung his arm, throwing his weight into a punch that struck a nearby tree. The force of the impact shattered the wood into splinters that scattered onto the forest floor. The very trunk seemed somewhat bent by the sheer power of his punch.

Coran separated his fist from the wood with a sharp tug. Squirtle could hear the subtle creaks and groans of the tree as it tried to hang on.

"I'm going to look for the jade pendant now," Coran said in a low tone of voice.

Squirtle didn't say anything in response as Coran walked down the path, brushing bits of sawdust off his knuckles. She couldn't formulate the words. All she could think about was how that tree could have been her.

When asked later, she couldn't come up with an answer of how much time had passed between when she and Coran split up, and when the ground swallowed her whole.

* * *

Squirtle didn't know when she had fallen unconscious. She only knew that she woke up to a splitting headache and a damp feeling all across her fur. Her eyes were squinted shut to try and mitigate the pain, but she forced them open.

There wasn't much of a change. Everything was still pitch black. Where did Squirtle end up? This was the forest, wasn't it?

Squirtle pushed herself off of the ground, noticing its cool, smooth texture. That didn't feel right either.

"Coran?" she called, her voice wavering from the wooziness that was still invading her brain. She pricked her ears for a response as her eyes got used to the darkness.

She heard the melodic drip of water, plinks interspersed with a quiet howling wind. The drone of a rushing river caught her ear far away, as well as hints of her own voice echoing back at her. The darkness was overwhelming, but as her eyes adjusted, she could see the subtle glistening of pools of water on stone, and the pointed, jagged silhouettes of stalagmites rising up from the ground.

Coran didn't respond.

The hackles on the back of Squirtle's neck raised. This was abnormal. This wasn't where she had last been. She had somehow ended up underground. But how? Had someone moved her? She didn't even know there was an underground portion in Thornike Woods.

"Hello?" Squirtle called again, her voice gaining a sort of aggressive edge to it. This wasn't a fetch quest anymore. Squirtle had to treat this as a much more dangerous type of mission: an expedition. She didn't know where she was, or even if she was still in the woods. Coran was alone, wherever he was, and she needed to find him and get back to Nuzlocke.

Squirtle began to walk through the subterranean caves, her ears perked to listen for any sort of sound. An ambush, Coran's heavy footfalls, the chatter of birds, anything that could lead her outside. Beyond the wet sounds that made a constant chorus of uneasiness, Squirtle could hear shuffling sounds around her. She wasn't alone down here.

Coran's questions began to echo through her mind. This couldn't have been a setup, right? Yamask wouldn't do that. But then, why _did_ he bring his jade pendant here? It didn't make sense! Thornike Woods was dangerous but otherwise unremarkable. So why would Yamask even go there in the first place, necklace or no necklace?

"Coran! Can you hear me?"

...

A spark ran up the eevee's spine. Squirtle heard something there. Not enough to make out any words, but there was definitely a living, breathing tone behind whatever sound she had just heard. As Squirtle's pace quickened the ground began to sting the pads of her feet with each bounding step she took. Squirtle's eyes stung as they detected a faint light ahead of her, and she called out again.

"Coran!"

"...is someone there...?!"

That wasn't Coran.

Squirtle skidded to a halt and shielded her eyes from a bright sky blue light that shone from above her. It took her a few moments for her vision to adjust, but what she saw baffled her.

Roots the size of city streets curved and bore through the walls and ceiling of this subterranean grotto, writhing in unpredictable paths like snakes in a thunderstorm. The roots pulsed with an eerie blue light and had a strange otherworldly sparkle to them that was reflected in what first appeared to be a lake at Squirtle's feet. That thought was soon dashed by a speeding silhouette breaking the mirror of the water with rippling footsteps.

"Eevee!"

And there, running directly towards the stunned eevee with a terrified expression illuminated by the ghostly blue of the roots above them, was the servine from town, Monty Montgomery.

Monty grabbed Squirtle and dove into the ankle-deep water, soaking the eevee thoroughly. She let out a cry of surprise and indignation, struggling against the servine's grip for just a moment.

Then a skarmory collided with the narrow entryway Squirtle had been standing in, making the walls of the chamber tremble.

"Servine!" Squirtle gasped, squirming out of his grasp in a panic. "What the hell are you doing here?!"

Monty opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by the angry screech of the metallic bird as it crashed into the water with a mighty splash, flailing its legs to right itself.

"As much as I would like to elaborate on that, I really don't think now is the time for talking!" Monty stressed, his hand already glowing with verdant green energy as he lobbed a razor-sharp leaf towards the skarmory. The projectile gave off a bright yellow spark as it scraped against the steel wing of its target. The skarmory didn't seem fazed in the slightest. It seemed to anger the bird instead. Its piercing yellow eyes were transfixed on Monty, and its beak dropped open to let out a screech.

"I can't do anything against that thing!" Squirtle's heart was beating faster. Her eyes were transfixed on the enemy. That thing was part steel. Nothing she had in her arsenal would do much against something with that much defence.

"Neither can I!" Monty protested, casting the skarmory a furtive look. "She looks ready to eat me alive if she gets the chance!"

Squirtle stopped to give him a look. "She?"

"It looks like a 'she.'"

They were stopped by the shrill sound of steel scraping against the carved stone walls as the skarmory soared towards them, talons outstretched.

"Run!" Squirtle barked, dashing to the side. It was hard for her to move very quickly with the water in the room. It barely touched the bottom of her belly. Squirtle winced at the sensation. The part that concerned her more, though, was how she was feeling the water seeping into her fur. If only it were just a little higher...!

She didn't see Monty behind her, but Squirtle could see the ghostly blue glint of the empty metal talons as the Skarmory circled around for another strike.

"We can't fight her!" Monty's voice came somewhere from Squirtle's right. His voice bounced oddly in the room, and the watery reflections made it hard to see. "We're going to have to get out of here!"

"The tunnel's too small for Skarmory to fit! Go there!" Squirtle's eyes darted around the perimeter of the room, looking for her entry point. What she saw instead chilled her more than the stagnant water.

She saw a pair of pointed talons heading straight for her.

Squirtle let out a cry of terror and turned to flee. A gasp was forced out of her lungs. Her midsection felt crushed like a chestnut, and her legs flailed helplessly as she was lifted out of the water.

"Monty!" she shrieked, staring down at the water. Squirtle could see the rippling silhouette of her captor, looking like a dark cloud in a shimmering sky. She tried to snap at the steel, tried to rake her claws against the bird, tried to summon that swift energy that she had used against Coran yesterday. But she couldn't focus. Nothing was coming.

That wasn't entirely true. A green light came from the ground, nearly slicing the thread of Squirtle's necklace. The skarmory let out a screech of surprise. Squirtle's front dropped as the talon lost its grip, leaving her swinging like a pendulum over the shallow pool below them.

"Stop stop stop he's going to drop me!" Squirtle yelled, her voice shrill with terror.

"Don't worry!"

"Don't _worry?!"_

Another shot of green came from the water. This time Squirtle's ears were assaulted by the crack of a whip. Her stomach flew up into her throat as Skarmory was jerked down from the air.

"Get ready!" Monty called.

"Ready for what?!"

There was a subtle bass note Squirtle heard as the vine whip grew taut.

Then a loud crack.

The bird flipped over and began to plummet, with Squirtle in tow. And even as they fell, she could feel the acceleration. Monty was going to slam them both down into the water like the head of a hammer.

The wind screamed in Squirtle's ears, stealing her own cry of horror from her mouth as she felt the talons surrounding her hindquarters grow loose.

"There!"

Before she realized what was happening, Squirtle was blasted to the side. Her entire body was wracked with the biting cold of a strong gust of wind, and her ears were flooded with a deafening crash. Some kind of vine caught her and set her down in the water next to Monty, his tall figure silhouetted by the glistening roof.

"That's not going to keep her down," Monty said, looking at Squirtle. "Let's skedaddle."

Squirtle, too dazed to really understand what was happening, simply stumbled after Monty as he dashed through the water to the tunnel. She tripped twice, both times getting a face of cave water, but her paws found dry stone beneath them soon enough. An angry call from the room they'd just escaped accompanied the sharp whine of razors against the cut stone. But the two pokémon were safe now.

The two of them sat against the cold wall of the cavern side by side, gasping for breath. For once, Squirtle's mind was empty, struggling to process everything that happened in there.

Monty spoke first. His words were slow, interspersed with tired breathing. "That was some adventure, wasn't it?"

Squirtle shut her eyes. "That was terrifying, is what it was."

"I'll give you that. I wasn't the one about to be cracked open like an egg."

"Thanks."

"Well, I was, but then you came along, and she targeted you for some reason. Perhaps she had a strong dislike for eevees?

"Servine."

He chuckled. "Apologies."

Squirtle felt the soft 'thunk' of her head against the wall behind her. There was still a buzzing in her mind from the adrenaline taking its sweet time exiting her system. But she was able to get out a simple question, one she had asked before.

"What on earth are you doing here, Servine?"

"I could ask you the same thing," he replied nonchalantly, digging into a bag he had around his shoulder. It was of an impressive make - luxurious purple fabric that looked both durable and fancy, with a deep red fringe. He pulled out a sitrus berry and offered it to Squirtle, who slowly shook her head. He shrugged and took a bite. "I thought you were going to Thornike Woods," he said idly after he swallowed his mouthful.

The gears in Squirtle's mind ground to a halt. "...What do you mean?"

"I was talking with your coworker this morning. Riolu? He mentioned that the two of you were going to fetch an heirloom Yamask lost in Thornike Woods. I tried to warn the two of you of-"

"Seismic activity, yeah," Squirtle finished for him with a wave of her paw. "I thought that's what happened here, maybe. That there was an earthquake and I fell under the woods. Where are we?"

"Oh!" Monty perked himself, his eyes lighting up. "Well! After the two of you left, I went back to the square to review my maps. I'd gone around the perimeter of Nuzlocke a few times in the past, but you can never be too sure about the specifics, especially when the market changes so often."

Squirtle nodded dumbly.

"Anyway! A couple of hours passed, and then we felt the earth shaking right in Nuzlocke! Imagine that, I was just talking to your coworker about seismic activity, and then this happens! North of Nuzlocke, about a ten-minute walk, the mountain trail had split cleanly in two. And wouldn't you know it, there was a large door carved into the cliff face! The mayor contacted Hasash - they're sending a commission up to investigate it, compare it to tectonic records and such - but I, meanwhile, didn't want this opportunity to go to waste.

"So, being the first-rate adventurer I am - no hard feelings, Squirtle, sometimes it doesn't work out in the business - I decided that I would forge a path for both Nuzlocke and Hasash, and investigate the cave myself! There was an afternoon of planning supplies, assembling cartography kits, and telling people where I was going. Safety first, all that. But I delved into the cave, all by my lonesome! I must have been walking for a couple of hours when I happened upon the very room you met me in.

"I was entranced, let me tell you. I'd never seen anything like that before! I wasn't sure what those things were up there, but they looked quite mystical and important, wouldn't you agree? Anyway, there was a skarmory there - as you know - and she wasn't in an excellent mood, to begin with. So my intrusion did her no favours. She crashed into the wall above the entrance I'd used. The entire entryway collapsed! This feral creature and I were about to be locked in mortal combat in an incredibly unique arena...and that was when you showed up."

Squirtle's blood had run cold during that whole conversation. She was no longer thinking about where she was. Or Monty's story. Or anything like that.

"Say...where _is_ your coworker, anyhow?"

Coran was alone.


End file.
